One of the biggest problems that apparel retailers face is matching apparel consumers with garments that have all the desired properties, features for a perfect fit. The vast majority of apparel retailers struggle with managing the tradeoff between offering a larger assortment of products and paying the high costs of carrying large amounts of inventory. A company that offers a large assortment of products, product features or variations, and sizes quickly finds the costs of inventory, inventory handling costs, and infrastructure (e.g., distribution centers) become prohibitively large as the number of stock keeping units (SKUs) increases. Conversely, a company with a more limited assortment will find that consumers either can't find the product or size they desire or choose a product that often they are not satisfied with and end up returning the garment. The combined cost associated with inventory and merchandise returns represents a significant portion of the overall costs for apparel retailers, particularly those who sell through direct channels such as the Internet, TV, or mail. The lost revenue opportunity for apparel retailers of all types, including store based retailers, associated with not having the correct size or product in stock can easily make the difference between a struggling and successful company. Those consumers who find an apparel product in their size are often times settling for the best available option rather than selecting a garment that fits them properly. A survey cited in U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,519, issued to Sung K. Park on Aug. 20, 1996, for an apparatus and method for custom apparel manufacturing, found that the percentage of the population that is correctly fitted by an available standard-sized article of clothing without any alteration is only two percent.
Apparel companies use two fundamentally different approaches to find garments that best meet their needs. The first approach captures information about a consumer and uses that information to recommend particular brands, products, and sizes that are likely to fit or match a consumer's tastes. The benefit of this approach is that it theoretically increases the probability that a consumer will find the best available standard product. The two drawbacks are that this approach doesn't solve the assortment-inventory tradeoff described previously nor does it resolve the issue of failure to achieve proper fit without further garment alteration.
The second approach creates custom apparel garments for consumers after preference and sizing information has been captured. The apparatus and method disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,519 is an example of this approach. This approach has consumers try on any number of products of predetermined dimensions until the consumer approves the fit and purchases the garment. The company reports the information captured during the try-on session to a manufacturing system that initiates garment creation. Another approach, described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,956,525, issued to Jacob Minsky on Sep. 21, 1999, for a method of measuring body measurements for custom apparel manufacturing, uses multiple cameras in a specially designed room, capturing height and body width data about the consumer. The company then uses these data to manufacture the clothing.
These approaches provide the manufacturing system with information that is useful in producing a custom garment and will likely result in a better fitting garment than the standard sizes. Since the garments are manufactured after the consumer order has been completed there is a reduced need for retailers to carry large amounts of finished-goods inventory. The drawback of these approaches is that each requires substantial involvement and time from the consumer. The majority of consumers perceive shopping for apparel not as a particularly desirable activity but rather a necessary evil. Any product that requires more involvement and more time from consumers will find limited potential in today's environment where an increasingly large number of household or personal needs can be met from a computer, a laptop, a PDA or a cell phone.
Applicants hereby incorporate by reference U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/909,930, and any patent that issues therefrom. Applicants also incorporate by reference U.S. Pat. No. 6,516,240, issued Feb. 4, 2003 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,353,770, issued Mar. 5, 2002.